News From The Old

Symphony From The Old World, Klaus Wieken

Frankfurter Grüne Sauce

As an amateur cook, spring is clearly my favorite time of year. After too many months of root vegetables, cabbage, and imported fruits and vegetables with too many frequent flyer miles before they ever hit my stove, I am ready for things that are grown locally and which can be purchased FRESH!

And one of my all time spring favorites is what we call the “Frankfurter Grüne Sauce” – a green sauce from Frankfurt, the recipe for which is at least 2000 years old! When we say Good Old Europe, we mean Good Ooooooooooooold Europe!

Roman legionnaires brought the basics of this sauce back to Rome from their exploits in the Near East and riffs on this green sauce have been played wherever the Romans went over the millenia.

The sauce was brought to the Frankfurt area around 1700 by two Italian traders named Bolongaro und Crevenna who simply couldn’t think of living in their newly chosen country without the company of their favorite hometown sauce.

The sauce which the cooks of these gentlemen prepared was, of course, not entirely identical to the one they left at home, as the cooks had to make do with the herbs that were available at local markets. Thus out of the Italian Salsa Verde evolved the Frankfurt version called Grie Soss locally.

By the way, one of the earliest fans of this new green sauce was Wolfgang Goethe who, while serving as a government minister in Weimar, had his mother prepare her version of the sauce and Fedex it to him. (Just kidding. He actually had it stagecoached).

A real traditional Frankfurter Grüner Sauce is made with up to ten different fresh herbs, all of which are finely chopped before going into the sauce. Among those frequently used are borage, dill, tarragon, chervil, lovage, parsley, pimpernel, sorrel, chive, and lemon balm. Here’s the recipe.

This sauce is exciting to eat with all kinds of boiled meats (veal breast, tongue, beef roast cuts) but also works well with a variety of poached fish. It is absolutely dynamite with new potatoes -- first boiled in their skins and then peeled.

If you can’t find any of the particular herbs from this list, despair not! After all, this is neither Rome nor Frankfurt. Try whatever is available locally and play with variations until you find your own favorite. After all that’s what those guys in Frankfurt did!

“Frankfurter Grüne Sauce”

Ingredients:

300 grams total of herbs (11 ounces) herbs
2 medium onions
4 hard boiled eggs
1 Tbls. white wine vinegar
2 Tbls. oil
1 cup crème frâiche
1 cup whole milk yogurt
pinch of sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Wash and dry the herbs. Chop herbs and onions finely; mix with yogurt, crème frâiche, vinegar, oil, salt and pepper and let stand for at least an hour. Then chop up the hard boiled eggs (fairly coarsely) and mix into the sauce. Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary and maybe even the pinch of sugar. Let rest another 15 minutes.

Asparagus Time in Europe

A second classic of German and French springtime gastronomy is one of my favorites, asparagus. Although one can now get some kind of asparagus from somewhere almost year round, Spargelzeit is still celebrated as a rite of spring in many countries.

Asparagus come in basically two forms – white (which are buried under the earth) and green, (which are exposed to the sun). The asparagus harvest is very closely regulated and the official season runs only from April until the middle of June. There are even tours arranged to restaurants close to the asparagus fields during this time.

The classic way to serve asparagus in our neck of the woods is with drawn butter, vinaigrette, or hollandaise sauce. Accompaniments are often boiled or smoked raw ham, smoked salmon, or veal filet. Starting in May, asparagus is often served with fresh new potatoes.

These are simple, yet refined preparations – elegant in their simplicity.
Variations can be played in a thousand forms on these basics. In Paris at this moment, for example, the Hotel Crillon is serving the following dish: Into a deep soup bowl is placed a layer of crème brûlée mixture. Cubes of fresh goose foie gras are stirred into the cream before it is flamed. On top come criss-crossed green and white asparagus. Then, just before serving, comes a large soupspoon of asparagus velouté. Absolutely delicious, but to my mind unnecessarily complicated. The simpler versions noted above are just as good – and easier to prepare at home!

That’s it! After all this writing and thinking about food, I’m hungry . Think I’ll run and get some fresh asparagus before the farmers’ market closes. Then this afternoon, perhaps I’ll serve them with some lightly smoked salmon – and maybe a dill vinaigrette or maybe a…. Hmmh! So many choices.

Dessert? How about some rhubarb spaghetti with a dollop of cinnamon cream? That certainly sounds spring-like, doesn’t it? Okay, I’m out of here.

Tschüss for now.

Klaus